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How do you keep cetyl alcohol in suspension?
I’m using cetyl alcohol and Tween-20 as a mild non-ionic shampoo. After heating it up, it makes a nice white creamy colloid/suspension, but after a couple weeks, it gets watery and grainy as the cetyl alcohol precipitates out.
Any ideas how to get it to stay in suspension? I used a commercial product that had a seemingly infinite shelf life! I went through the short course, but it didn’t really give me any ideas on where to start…
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3 Replies
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@rseguin what is your complete formula? It seems that you may be missing a strong enough surfactant to keep the cetyl alcohol solubilized. Cetyl alcohol itself is not a surfactant/emulsifier, and Tween-20 (Polysorbate 20) alone may not be enough or you may need much more than there is cetyl alcohol.
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Thanks! I’m trying to get away from strong surfactants. There is a commercial hair cleaner that my wife and I loved called No-Poo that seems to be basically just cetyl alcohol, and it is stable forever in a white creamy “gel”.
I really don’t have a set formula, and have been playing with variables (mainly amount of water and relative amount of cetyl alcohol). I always get a wonderful creamy consistent product, but it always starts to separate and precipitate after a week or two.
If possible, copy any response to seguin.russell@gmail.com I’m not sure how this forum works, but I didn’t get any notice that someone had responded and took me forever to find my original post…
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@rseguin you can’t have a stable emulsion without the right surfactant. New Wash (a No-Poo) uses strong cationic surfactants (Dicetyldimonium Chloride, Behentrimonium Methosulfate, Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine). Lack of foam doesn’t mean there is no surfactants in it.
If you post the ingredient list of the product you like we can tell you why it is stable. Otherwise, all I can say is you likely can’t achieve a stable emulsion with just Cetyl alcohol and Polysorbate 20, and no oil.
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